


Five People (or Beings) Who Inhabit the SGC

by holdouttrout



Category: Stargate SG-1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-01
Updated: 2009-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:19:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdouttrout/pseuds/holdouttrout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I got to thinking about how lucky SG-1 was that they never had anything that transformed them permanently, and how there must be a few SGC personnel who weren't so lucky. Thus this was born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five People (or Beings) Who Inhabit the SGC

Sarah Marsh, who works on the 22th floor with the Potentially Hazardous Materials team, phases in and out of existence.

They think it's a side effect from the artifact from P3X-667 that looks like a lumpy, useless rock and hasn't affected anyone or anything else (as far as they know). Every once in a while, Sarah just disappears; one minute she's sitting in a department meeting staring at her notebook and trying to figure out what to say about her current project to make it sound like she's making progress, and the next she's...nowhere.

Then, seconds or weeks later, she pops back in to the room, still holding the same pencil and blinking at an empty (or not so empty, in a few cases) room.

There's no trigger, and there's no cure.

She's been checked out by all the doctors in the SGC, a few outside with clearance, and three psychologists, just to be on the safe side. She remembers nothing while she's gone, and the doctors currently think she doesn't even age when she's not...around. Sarah's just glad she never had a personal life to begin with, and wishes she could drive a car again.

The Potentially Hazardous Materials team takes care that no one disturbs Sarah's office--ever--just in case, and makes sure to tape any chair she disappears from with some variation of "DO NOT MOVE--MARSH PROTOCOL."

She's also become notorious for hearing all the best gossip. Since the whole phasing thing began, she's single-handedly closed thirteen betting pools. It's amazing what happens when people think they're in an empty room, and Sarah has become very good at ducking under tables surreptitiously.

******

There's a storage closet on the 19th floor that locks people in, and Nori Harris is probably the only person on base that doesn't know about it. Nori has phenomenal luck. She constantly misses everything exciting that happens on base. She's slept through two separate foothold situations. She has been off-base every time the self-destruct counter came anywhere near zero.

She's been off-world twenty-three times, and never been shot at, drugged, lost, or otherwise in danger.

No one wants her on their team.

They reassure her it's just pure coincidence that her teams never found a cache of weapons, or a library filled with ancient knowledge, or a civilization full of wise and compassionate people, but after a few missions they always go to the General and ask for her to be reassigned.

It has been months since Nori has gone on any missions. She reports for work at 8 am sharp, and goes home at 5. She never hits any traffic.

Nori Harris has the most boring job in the universe.

******

Captain Matt Ellis was assigned to the SGC in 2008. He has been off-world once so far. He hasn't been cleared for active duty since then because technically he's still "affected by the unique conditions of P5S-772, which have altered the chemistry of his epidermis to create a camouflaging effect."

In short, his skin changes color.

The rest of his team knew better than to touch the strange-looking device on a pedestal in the middle of the dilapidated temple, but it was Matt's first mission, and he was curious and more than a little shaken by the trip through the Stargate. He just wasn't thinking.

He's been subjected to test after test, and the file of notes from the temple has been added to the linguistic department's stack, but his case isn't even close to the most urgent one, and most people can't quite wrap their head around the idea that Matt's new ability is a hindrance to his job. General Landry has been quietly lobbying for Captain Ellis to be returned to active duty, since he's seen--or rather, not seen--Captain Ellis subdue an irate diplomat's bodyguard before he could create an intergalactic incident, and before anyone blinked.

Officially, Matt isn't supposed to go off-world, but he's mysteriously ended up beamed up by accident, or swept through the gate with full gear because he just "happened" to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, he's very hard to see, and even Asgard sensors aren't perfect.

Of course, it has been rather difficult to explain to his wife.

******

On level 20, three chemists are quietly working on a cure for cancer.

None of them can speak.

That's a side effect of the plant they're working with--one that no one caught until they had already been exposed. That's the one thing they need to fix before they do any more testing, but on the plus side, it means they'll never get cancer.

None of them are sure it's that bad of a trade-off. In fact, as they've spent more time without their voices, they've started to think that people in general talk too much. And it's not like they can't communicate; it's amazing how quickly they developed a rough sign language to replace their verbal dialog, and once Lisa started taking ASL, they all joined in. It's a little weird for them outside the mountain since they can all still _hear_ , but it works.

At first, Chad spent half of his time trying to cure their voicelessness, but now it's a project they only work on in hypotheticals. "If I could just _say_ it," they sign to each other. More recently, though, they've started playing with another hypothetical.

"What if we can't get rid of the side effect?"

They have to fix it, but sometimes, especially after hearing the sounds of arguments from down the hall, or jumping when the klaxon sounds at unauthorized gate travel, they play the what-if game.

It would make their lives easier.

People would listen more.

Neighbors might get along better if they couldn't complain about noise.

It's a game, only a game. When it gets too serious, too close, Mary turns on opera, the sound of voices reaching for the heavens and shattering the sky.

They go back to work.

******

Kri'Klat is stranded. He was the advance scout for his people, the one N'Na responsible for deciding if they would join the humans to fight the Goa'uld or if they needed to be destroyed as a pestilence upon the face of the galaxy. He still hasn't made up his mind, but it doesn't matter anyway. He's invisible to their eyes, their sensors, and he stays out of the reach of their TERs. When he arrived, he was a little shocked they had that kind of technology and nearly got caught before he made it out of the gateroom, but thankfully the room was a mass of confusion at the time, and he didn't look "alien" enough for them to notice him right away.

If he wanted to interact with the humans, he would first need to go home and de-phase, which is a problem, since even if he could get past the TERs a second time (he probably could), his home has been wiped out.

He could go through the Stargate, but he's not sure what the point would be. Maybe someday. For now, he occupies himself by haunting the labs and snickering at the humans' science or staring at the large board of open betting pools and seeing how many of them he knows. He moves things in labs, too--not dangerous things, but tools or books. He gets a small kick out of watching people fume around their desks, cursing as they try to locate that translation that was right there.

He also enjoys watching their mating rituals. He finds them absurdly complicated, but fascinating, and he likes to compare them to the stylized examples as portrayed on their television device.

Still, he gets bored.

He hasn't quite brought himself so low as to resort to tripping people in the hallways, but he does get a perverse satisfaction out of locking the storage closet on the 19th floor every now and then.


End file.
